Masquerade Games
By Mitch, Shaine, and Shatterclaw. Individual rating: PG-13.
Jinks was furious. "What are you doing in my lab?"
Mitch and Shaine fell silent.
"Uh..um..hi, Mommy... We were just trying to figure out what we could do for these new suits?"
"Ah huh...and for that you needed to break a code one lockout? Which, I might add, ought to get the whole lot of you thrown out...but, seeing as you've come this far you might as well tell me exactly what you were looking for?"
Bell bit her lip. "Well, see, Mitch here thought he might be able to come up with some improvements for the cold-weather gear."
Shaine took advantage of the situation to quietly pop the hypercard out of the terminal and slip it back into her pocket.
"I'm a hardware expert. I think I could be of some use."
"Yes, I know...but this gives you the right to break into my office?" Jinks sighed. "But as long as you're all here..."
She stepped over to a tube standing against the wall and opened it. Inside was a bulky, all-white hardsuit. "This is a cold weather hardsuit. We're working out the technical details right now. It can take up to 100 degrees below; if we can get it down to 220 below we should be safe."
"May I ask what you are using for protection against the temperatures?"
"It is an isoliner core material with a heat element built in."
"Hmmmm..."
"We need it to be stronger, without making it hotter, so that we can still use our cloaks without showing up on infrared. This one is a type one hardsuit with a heater and an extra layer of insulation, as well as heavy innerwear to keep the pilot warm."
"What about self-contained life support?"
"Yes, with a backup. The problem is that it is pro-rated for temperatures around 100 degrees."
"Have you done any testing yet?"
"Only drone testing in a nitro chamber. The outer shell held up, but the inner suit was...less than reliable. We believe that the suit will hold up at lower temperatures, but not the pilot."
"Do you have a test pilot?"
"No. Crimson wanted to do it, but with the condition he's in... He should be at home, in bed, not running around! At any rate, the suit goes to critical in less than five minutes and will overheat at anything above 26 degrees. Test results seem to point to power core meltdown, followed by total system degradation and then weapons detonations."
"Interesting...so it's a homeostasis problem."
"Yes, that's at least part of it. I had thought of perhaps a dual-suit system, with an inner suit for life support and a heavier outersuit to act as a weapons platform."
"Have you heard of ZyGel? It's basically a gellied antifreeze...just what we need here..."
"Yes, but never used it. Too hard to find. Only NASA, USSD, and SPDC would have any supplies of it. Do you think you could get your hands on some?"
"Me? No. But I know someone who might. He's a little shady, but we can trust him."
Shaine smiled. "Don't we all know someone like that..."
"Yes, but most of the time they're in the group already...or trying to kill one of us."
"It's a long story, really, so let's just say he owes me a favor." Mitch smiled.
"We'll need a good-sized amount. I can synthesize more here, but it will take some to get the right formula."
"Trust me, he understands. His clients don't like questions, if you know what I mean."
"We'll need two, maybe three pints per suit. See if he has anything in...oh...maybe a fifty gallon size. It may be useful for other purposes."
"Yeah, I think you're right. Fifty gallons. I'll talk to him tomorrow."
"Now, then. What do you think of this idea?"
"I say go for it!" Mitch was obviously quite enthused.
Shaine hesitated. "I don't particularly relish it, but if it hurts Genom I'm in."
"Good. As I was saying, the inner suit will serve as life support and backup, while the larger one will house most of the weapons, backup life support functions, and the cloaking device."
"Cloaking device?"
"Yes, most hardsuits have them - well, ours do anyway. My father designed them. Normally it is housed in the back of the suit and along the trenchcoat, but the trenchcoat would only slow down the heavy suit. It's not very aerodynamic."
"What do you use? Light refraction system?"
"Light refraction with a digital enhancer, fiber-optic RV emitter, digital scanners and enhanced on-the-go sampling."
"I'd love to see the specs on that!"
"I'm sorry," Jinks replied, "But that's not possible." Mitch smiled slightly and sighed.
"You must understand..." Her phone rang.
"Yes...yes...I accept... Hello?
"Yes. I see, yes...we have an idea--
"How soon? How much?
"Yes, I understand...yes, yes sir..." She hung up. "It seems that Crimson is having a wonderful time in Tokyo... He's brought us all a new assignment."
"So now I have two bosses?" Mitch smiled.
"Three: me."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Mitch, do you have any time off from the ADP? And Shaine, do you have any free time?"
"Nothing but," Shaine said ruefully.
"I've got a two week vacation coming, but I don't know how Captain Boudreaux is going to be about it."
"Good. Shaine, we'll need to make your uncle think you're going on a trip."
"All right," she replied slowly.
"I can't go into detail right now - Crimson wants to brief you himself when he comes back - but we need to have this done, and I need to ask at least three weeks from everyone. Also, Shaine, I need you to develop a tracking program for the suits."
"Three weeks? The Captain is not going to be happy!"
"We'll handle it. Now get some sleep; we'll meet with the others tomorrow."
///
The door opened and Erik's head snapped around reflexively. Who--
"Carter. What is it now?" Bad enough, having to work on a Sunday evening, even worse when he'd been in the office all day Saturday...but a visit from her?
"Have you made any headway on the Ravens?"
"No." The sullen one-word answer hung in the air for several seconds before he continued. "I have absolutely no resources to work with...and yet you expect results?"
"Really? I would have thought that with a whole company of Dobermans...oh, that's right, they're gone aren't they."
Erik once again refused to speak.
"Oh, come on! You have the full force of Genom behind you!"
"Needle in a haystack, Carter...it's not a matter of force. And considering the assaults that our servers have faced..."
"True. Informants? Spies?"
"We did have that one Raven agent I caught...but he died too quickly and knew too little anyway. Their inner circle is much too loyal to be bought... I did have plans for Shaine, but those fell through..."
"Really? Whatever happened to that dear girl?" She smiled, with the same look in her eyes as the one a cat gives a bird.
"She didn't take well to that concoction you had me slip to her. And I wouldn't be surprised if she blamed me for the mugging as well."
Carter laughed out loud. "Oh, yes...that. Well, I suppose it was a trifle rude of me."
"That whole mess could have been prevented if you had listened to me. She had no reason to hold back information, as I told you..."
"Does she? She was forcibly removed from our family..."
"She was forcibly removed because she didn't play by the rules. You and I both know how little those rules mean."
"There was no love lost between her and Genom, and there seems to be no love lost between her and you," she mused. "No. Enlighten me...how little do the rules mean? To you, that is."
"I think you know that I was never supposed to come back from Berlin. I was to be used and thrown away..but I pulled it off, better than anyone could have expected, and even survived. I didn't do that by following my orders to the letter." He smiled slowly. "Oh, but that's before your time...isn't it?"
Carter grinned back. "You wound me."
Leaning over his desk, Erik looked into her eyes, his tone nearly like that of a lover. "The Daimler takeover was far more hostile than you can imagine."
"Oh, I know. Quincy tutored me on it. A basic takeover relay, first-year material."
"A suitable case study, yes...but did he ever explain how exactly I managed to maintain my rank while my colleagues...ah...did not?"
"No. Do tell!"
He leaned back a bit again. "I think I'll leave that as an exercise for the student." A tiny smile.
"Oh, so now you're my teacher."
Getting petulant...yes, I'm in control now. Too bad she's Quincy's pet; it would be painfully simple to oust her if she weren't...
"No." Another dramatic pause. "There's no reward in taking on a student who refuses to learn."
Carter leaned forward, hands on the desk. "But I do want to learn..." she pleaded, her voice low and seductive.
"Yet you refuse to take every lesson you can. Evon, for example..." He gestured toward the one-way window overlooking one of his labs. Evon was standing there, lecturing, as two young interns peered intently at the half-assembled body of an ADP Boomer. "You can't have any idea how useful a tutor he is. A completely open book, and written so plainly...a beginner's text, but suitable for brushing up on the basics."
"True...but one day, that book may just bite back."
"If using brute terror, perhaps. But the correct solution renders him harmless.
"But, then, you wouldn't understand that..."
She laughed again.
"Mixed metaphors and fear tactics," Erik murmured. "Rosenkreutz must be slipping in his old age..."
"Blasphemy!"
Steady, now...she's almost ready... "And you don't ever question your faith?"
"Not when it comes to him!"
"Then you're blind," he snapped.
"Am I?"
"We're on the verge of a new Protestant Reformation. Things are changing and we - like the Catholic Church - are not changing with them.
"If we don't change, we will be shattered. Crushed. We can't just grab what we have left and try to rebuild...our work is business, not God, and we have a timetable considerably nearer than the end of the world."
"We as in who?"
"Are you that dense? It's not just Genom that's in danger. It's the entire way of life that Genom has created. We are the company of Boomer technology and if we go down, so do Boomers. What then?"
She sat down, finally. "What if the Boomers do go down?"
"It's back to the twentieth century," he spat.
"Do you know, most of our factories run themselves?"
"You shouldn't have to ask."
"No, I shouldn't. This is the key...do you think that this world is meant to live without Genom?"
"If you truly believe that Boomers could continue without us - without our immediate and physical presence, not merely our legacy - what then? Fragmentation? Turf wars between would-be successors? I'd rather believe that we'll be catapulted back to the Industrial Revolution!"
"Quincy has everything playing to his tune."
"Do you hear your melody there? I don't.
"I don't hear mine either."
"Oh, I do hear mine...it just has to sound exactly like his in order to succeed."
Erik laughed. "I'll leave you your strained pitch, then. But as for myself, I'd rather change the tune. Now, if you don't have anything more...? My office does not run itself."
"I do have one more thing."
"Oh?"
"Yes...a report that a person in this very company has been misusing our production system..." She stopped a moment, then said, "To make personalized Boomers."
"I see."
"They're some of the most wonderfully programmed models I've ever seen...possibly more emotionally intricate than Sexaroids! They...perform...so well that I even had one made for myself."
Erik raised an eyebrow, still playing innocent. "What exactly is this new Boomer of yours?"
She pulled out a hypercard copy of a Boomer program disk. Across the label, in Erik's own handwriting, was scrawled Shaine.
"Oh. My."
"Yes..." Carter raised her voice. "Come on in, dear..."
The Shaine Boomer was dressed in a skewed, perverse version of one of the business suits he'd bought for the real Shaine. It was mostly leather, with a bare satin scrap of a blouse being the only part of it that wasn't black. She wore fishnet stockings and spike heels...
God help him, she even had a riding crop in one hand.
"I will have to find and thank this employee..."
"I see you haven't hesitated to add your own personalized touches," Erik finally managed to choke out.
"Why, no, this is the way I found her."
"Really."
"But you must agree it is a wonderful idea." She rose to leave. "Oh, and Erik? Next time you make one of these, be sure you pay for it?"
"Of course."
Erik could see Carter give the Boomer a little squeeze as they walked out.
///
At six that night, Jinks walked into the meeting room. Everyone else on the team had arrived already, except of course Crimson and Hugo. She had a sheaf of papers under one arm, which she began to pass out. "Okay, I need everyone to fill these out. Make sure they have the right information.
"Crimson is coming back on Monday - that's tomorrow. He met with the founder of the Knight Sabers, and she has asked a favor of us. Tonight we need to vote on whether to accept or deny that favor. If we accept it, your paperwork will have to be up to date and filled in..."
"Um...Mom..."
"What is it?"
"We've got a rogue in the lower levels of downtown. Looks like it's tearing up the place...ADP is off dealing with some other problem..."
"What?" Mitch seemed offended.
"Yeah, see?" She passed him her laptop, which was displaying ADP radio communications as a text box on its screen. "Been four - no, five - fights with this same Boomer. I think they're getting the runaround..."
"Lark, Shaine, Mitch, and Bell, you're with me," Jinks said.
Lark? That's a new code name... Vicki soon followed them, so it was not hard to tell who it was.
Once they reached the suits, Mitch began to look nervous. "Excuse me...I'm new to this..." Bell helped him in as the others put on their own suits. "Thank you!"
"Hey, no problem labcoat! Just don't make me save you!"
Being lifted off into the night sky was the most incredible rush Mitch had ever felt, and he didn't hesitate to tell them. His enthusiastic whoops forced Shaine to suppress a laugh...after all, she didn't want to have to explain why she was so jaded after less than two weeks on the team.
"Okay, we're going to land and jump back up," Belladonna told him. "Careful on the landing...you want to push off again just as you hit the ground."
"Bell, team up with Mitch...Lark with Freefall..."
Just then they hit their jump jets. After a near miss, Mitch easily got the hang of it. "This is almost fun?"
"Almost? Are you cracked? This is fun!" Belladonna raced ahead of him.
Mitch smiled. "I fought K-11 five years ago."
"Really? In one or against one?"
"No, that's riot control."
"Riot control? Is that a desk-pusher job?"
"Bell, I've been on the force - ADP and regular police - for fifteen years now. It's not all behind a desk."
Jinks cut the conversation off: "Freefall, are you picking it up anywhere?"
"I've got something big...beneath the street. It's moving."
"How big?"
"Twenty feet wide...maybe about the same height... It's heading for us!"
"Arm weapons, everyone, and land on that roof."
"All right, let's see what this puppy can do!" Mitch's smile turned to a snarl.
"Mitch, take point. Lark, Bell, get ready to strike hard." Jinks fired a grenade from her suit, which burned through a nearby manhole cover. The ground near the manhole rumbled, and concrete flew up into the air. The ground parted...
Mitch took aim and fired before he even saw what it was. The others gasped at the sight of the huge, mismatched Boomer.
"What is that?" he asked belatedly. It looked like it had been crafted from a design by Frankenstein, with parts from Sexaroids, Dobermans, practically any type of Boomer one could imagine, fused into one gigantic mass.
"You don't want to know," Jinks told him.
Mitch fired his railgun again, with little effect.
"Oh my gawwwwd!" Belladonna gasped. "That Boomer's from Mickey D's!
"Well, at least part of it..."
"Freefall, Lark, cover fire. Bell and Mitch, go for the core."
"The word supersize will never have the same meaning for you again, huh."
"Uh-huh, Shaine! If that things asks whether we want fries with that, I'm outta here!"
Mitch let fly a grenade and growled as Jinks pulled out her rifle and began to fire at the beast's three heads. "The core is in the central head. Concentrate your firepower there."
Shaine dodged the far left head, which was using an axle as a mace. She dodged as it swung at her and brandished her sword at it. The creature backed away from her momentarily.
Mitch dove at the beast, twin laser swords at the ready, and slashed at the central head. The swords sliced through its massive neck, leaving the head dangling atop the body. A large, pumping mass could be seen inside the neck. He drove one sword through it. "Die, beast!"
The Frankenstein Boomer fell apart into so much junk. Mitch stood there staring at it, and breathing heavily.
"Freefall, get the part numbers from it. We need to find out where it came from. Mitch, good job."
"Yeah, just like the guy with the claws! What's his name again?"
"Thanks!" Mitch said, with a growl in his voice.
"What, Wolverine or Sabertooth or something?" Lark asked.
"What? Bell?" Mitch, not exactly literate in the world of comic books, was puzzled.
"The cute one! You know...the guy with claws...Wolf-something-or-other... From those comic books! Something X?"
"Not X-Files, I can tell you that!"
"Wolverine, yeah, that's it... Ooooh, good one, Shaine! We can call him Mulder!"
"NO!" The ouroborous tattoo seemed to burn on her skin at the very suggestion of such a thing. How could she explain to Belladonna how just inherently...wrong...that name was for him?
"C'moooon, he'd make a great Mulder..."
"If anyone's Mulder, it's that Harris...about as cheerful as a snake bite, that one..." She scowled.
"Why not just call him Wolverine?" Lark asked.
Mitch smiled. "What?"
Jinks spoke up: "Ladies and gentlemen, we'll be having company soon."
"Right," Shaine said. "Let's fly."
Five black figures rose into the night sky just as the first ADP cruisers arrived.
///
A petite Boomer with curly brown hair and deep green eyes met Erik at the door. "Rough day?"
"Yeah," He shrugged out of his coat and handed it to her. "Straight to dinner, I think, then a shower and bed."
"Should I have Martya wait for you?"
He hesitated, exhaling sharply through his teeth. "No. I'm in no mood for it. Besides which, I'm getting tired of her."
"I'll take care of it, then."
"No one new to replace her, just yet. Carter's thrown a fit about...well...You Know Who, and I'd like to avoid any purchases that might seem excessive."
The Boomer pursed her lips. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Yeah, once I'm done with everything else..." He laughed. "Why don't you wait for me?"
The two of them laughed together, then. "All right, I will," she replied lightly.
"Thank you, Kathy."
///
The Boomer modeled after Kathy Kohl frowned. "So you're saying there's a third one now... What does Katerin think?"
"Our Shaine, you mean? She doesn't know."
"I can understand keeping that from her...but do you mean you still haven't told her what she is? You're going to break her that way if you're not careful..."
"She thinks the real Shaine is the Boomer. It's got to be the only way to go about it; I told the others and none of them--"
"You have to accept that none of them will ever be perfect. It's asking too much..."
"No. I'm so close..."
"I suppose you want to start over again. Or at least tweak this one."
"Her emotions still aren't responding properly. And I'm sure there's something off about her chin..."
"Her chin is fine, Erik." There was a look of desperation - even pity - in Kathy's eyes. "Just...let go. It's all you can do, at this point." She put her arms around him and whispered, "You're running yourself into the ground with this, when the important thing is finding Shaine. You do know that, don't you?'
"Of course."
She kissed him on the cheek and walked away.
///
"Why are you calling me Wolverine?" Mitch demanded.
"Well...you've got the two swords...and you snarl, y'know?" The two young women giggled.
"I don't know," Belladonna said. "He's a little Canadian guy who jumps into battle, and forgets he has help...doesn't sound like anyone we know..."
"Are you insulting Canadians?" Shaine tensed up.
"Me? Never! Why would I want - oh, wait, Mom's calling..." She ran out of the hangar.
"Don't mind her," Lark said. "She gets a little hyper after a fight...comes from sitting around playing video games all day..."
"I can only imagine!" Shaine murmured.
Lark turned to Mitch. "Nice job, Wolvie!"
"Wolvie?"
"Yeah...a short," she gestured with her fingers held not too far apart, "Version of your new codename."
"Yeah, we can't go calling you Mitch when your ADP buddies might be hearing us..."
"All right..." Mitch grinned. "Well, that was fun!"
"Fun? You want fun? Try a few Dobermans next time!"
"Oh, yes, please let Genom send us more Dobies. I wish to die young and without a degree in my chosen profession..." She shook her head, then yawned. "Excuse me...I have to go get some sleep. Got a 6am class tomorrow..."
"So...what about the others?"
"The others? You mean their codenames?"
"Yeah. I know you're Lark..."
"Well, Anni is Belladonna, but we usually just call her Bell or brat...Mom is Jinks 'cause she used to keep blowing up computers when she was young...and as for the rest, you'll just have to ask them. Not my place to tell you...oh, but whatever you do, don't ask about Crimson's name!"
"No problem. So, what about you, Shaine?"
Lark yawned again. "Damn Boomers...why can't they just do this crud on a regular schedule?"
"I'm Freefall...and don't ask me or Bell how I got that..."
"Freefall!" Bell cried out over the comms. "Because she falls freely from the skies..."
"Don't even go there, Bell."
"Could be Dances-with-Dobermans!" She cut the comms.
Jinks came down the tube and into the bay, then took off her helmet. "Shaine, can you go over the data from that Boomer for me sometime tonight?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Good. Here's my readings." She held out a disk from the compartment on the side of her suit's leg. "There might be something here that you didn't pick up."
She then turned to Mitch. "You did well out there, but be a little more careful. All right? I don't want to lose you so soon..."
"I'm always careful!" He smiled.
"Spoken like a young nestling... Well, I'm off to work on the suits. I'll see you later."
///
All right, then...perhaps a little fun before I start in on the data analysis? Shaine had never had much to speak of when it came to self-restraint, and so the laptop was out before she had a chance to think twice.
She'd managed to find a reasonably good brute-force way into the less secure terminals of Erik's taskgroup, and that was where she had planted the sleeper virus. Still lying inactive, it would be undetectable...to anyone else, that was...
Her obvious assault earlier that afternoon had given her ample opportunity to insert the virus in one terminal's access logs, and those logs were surely being spread around as Erik tried to figure out what she was doing. It would take a far better hacker than any in his employ to unearth anything, but she welcomed him to try.
After all, it made it all the easier for her to bring the entire taskgroup down.
She entered that time through a terminal other than the one she'd originally infected. With any luck, the virus would have reached the terminal already. She reinfected it just to be sure.
A light blinked on her alert console. A Genom subroutine was trying to track her.
Her IP address was already forged; she attempted to get inside the subroutine and reboot it...jolt it off of its course. It lost her, at least for the moment.
Transmitting the first access code for the sleeper virus, she was certain to leave another message for Erik: Three strikes and you're out. Even Erik, with his complete ignorance of all history not within the past fifty years or at least a century and a half old, could understand that one.
If Evon had been alive, he'd surely have been chuckling over her previous message...but, then, it was best not to think about it.
Another tracking subrouting began trying to lock on to her. She got out quickly, her purpose accomplished.
The screen flashed blue and white. She slid in a boot disk and restarted, just to be safe.
As soon as it had restarted, the computer bypassed the password screen and immediately began to dial up again. Shaine pulled the cell modem, disconnecting it manually. A face looking almost like Carter's, but bald and blue, could be seen briefly...then Shaine shut it down again hurriedly. She wiped it, repartitioned it, and reinstalled everything from a clean backup.
"Damn..."
As Windows began installing, she grabbed her CD player. Pulling on the headphones, she sat down and put her head in her hands. Lass mich deine Träne reiten/übers Kinn nach Afrika/wieder in den Schoß der Löwin...
///
Jinks was working on one of the suits as Mitch walked in. "I talked to my friend about the ZyGel. He says ten thousand dollars, two weeks. On the regular black market, the stuff goes for thirty thousand for the same amount."
"The money is no problem...it's the timetable. We really need to get our hands on it now."
"Let me call him back." Mitch went to the phone. Mick, an importer and fence, had been saved from a mob hit by Mitch, two years earlier. He certainly owes me enough...
"Hey, Spike, it's Mitch! Is Mick there?"
The vidphone quickly switched hands. "Mitch, hey! You still want that ZyGel?"
"Yeah! Just one problem...we need it ASAP. Can't wait the two weeks."
"All right, but it's not going to be cheap."
"Tell him we'll pay twice as much." Jinks called.
"And I need to know where and when."
"The old ruins of the Brickyard mall. Where Ward's used to be. That should give us enough cover..."
"Twenty thousand, Mick. You owe me."
"Awwww, Mitch! You're my friend! Of course I'm good for it! How about tonight? Midnight?"
"Yeah, at the old ruins of the Brickyard."
"Sure thing, buddy. See you later, man..."
"He'll do it. Old Brickyard, midnight."
"Got it...and I know just the truck we'll take." She hit a button on the intercomm. "Anni, send...Mitch, what was his name again?"
"Mick Meyer, twenty-two-twenty South Street."
"You got that, Anni? Send him twenty thousand, for the Zygel, and make sure it's a secure account."
" 'Kay, Mom."
"So how are we going to do this?"
"I've got a new truck to test out...I think we'll take that."
"Mick's people will drop at twelve and be out of there, fast. They aren't generally the type to wait around and be sociable."
"All right, but we should still go in cloaked. Never know what the stars might see..."
"Good idea. There's probably street people out by that area...don't want any of them to see us."
At ten, Mitch met Jinks, Bell, and Shaine next to a huge, rectangular form covered by a tarp. All four wore hardsuits.
"I would like to introduce the next wave in Ravens transports..." Jinks pulled a rope, and the tarp fell. Underneath was a tractor-trailer, painted ebony-black with no trim or color to it. It almost didn't reflect light at all. There were four huge jetfans on the roof of the trailer, and treadlike tires.
"It will be armed with missiles, lasers, and a 175mm cannon. It also has four hydraulic booms to carry motoslaves, and can sleep six. It is Arctic safe, and has a hover mode...
"The Ravens now have an RV!"
"And it's got a killer sound system..."
"Sweet." Shaine smiled. "Any chance of playing some Rammstein on that thing?"
"Rom-what?"
"Never mind," she sighed.
"Well, then, if there are no questions...?"
"No."
"Hop in, and let's go for a test spin."
"I call shotgun!" Bell cried.
Shaine rolled her eyes and followed Mitch into the "RV."
///
The drive to the ruined mall took only a few minutes. All that was left of the site was a bombed-out crater around which there were a few shells of former walls. Jinks pulled the truck over to the side behind a wall.
The computer terminal inside was linked to a satellite, scanner, and sensor package; the Ravens could see around the truck easily without having to post sentries.
"We'll have to decloak the truck to send anyone in or out. So if you want to go, go together and go now. And be sure to keep your personal cloaks on."
Shaine rose immediately, too restless to stay inside. "You coming, Mitch?"
Once outside of the truck, the only sound was that of the ground crunching beneath their boots. Faint footprints could be seen, but there was no other visible sign of their presence. The van quickly shimmered away into nothing.
"I see a truck coming from the southwest," Jinks said. The pair outside could easily see it a moment later.
The truck stopped. A tarp covering the back flopped open, and a large man stood.
"Spike," Mitch said, smiling.
"Be careful," Jinks warned. "I'm reading a few hand-weapons; the ZyGel is said to be explosive, under the right conditions..."
"Don't worry. They'll be out of here as fast as they can."
Spike took a barrel from the back of the pickup and tossed it over the side. Another soon followed. The pickup sped away.
As it left, an ADP cruiser turned on its lights and sped off in pursuit.
"Not good..." Mitch said.
"Aw, man, Wolverine...looks like your buddies are gonna give us a hard time!" Shaine sprinted over to the barrels and picked one up. Mitch quickly followed. They placed the barrels in the cargo hold, secured them, and buckled themselves in. Jinks brought the huge truck back to life and the two Ravens seated in the back could feel it accelerate.
"Want to do anything for your friends, Mitch?"
"No. They're keeping the ADP busy, and won't be in any danger since we have all of the evidence right here."
"So be it. I'm heading back to the base, then."
"Hey, can we take this thing through the drive-thru at Mickey D's? I know someone who would just die to see us..."
There was a smacking sound and the hiss of static over the comms. Belladonna fell silent...for a moment.
"Ow, owwy, owwwwww... Come on, it was just a joke..."